Sometimes Giving Credit Where It`s Due Isn`t Easy

May 03, 1985|By Tom Shales. Washington Post Writers Group.

Gerald Green wrote the teleplay for the recent NBC mini-series

``Wallenberg: A Hero`s Story.`` The on-screen credits say so, the Writers Guild of America says so and Gerald Green emphatically says so. Indeed, a Writers Guild arbitration proceeding stated without a flinch of a doubt that Green is the sole author of the script.

So naturally Green gets a trifle irked that Lamont Johnson, the director of the film, and Dick Berg, the producer, are still running around saying they wrote it.

``Look, I`m 63 years old, I`ve been a writer for 40 years, I`ve gotten a lot of bad reviews and some good ones, but nobody has ever challenged my integrity,`` says Green, an affable if momentarily agitated old pro who lives not in Hollywood but in New Canaan, Conn. ``Nobody has ever said, `Gerald Green is a faker. He put his name on somebody else`s script.` That`s what hurts me.``

On the surface, the dispute may sound like petty Hollywood squabbling. But the Writers Guild manual states, ``A writer`s position in the motion picture or television industry is determined largely by his credits.`` Even producer Berg concedes, ``We live by our credits in this business.``

In January, the Guild arbitration committee in Los Angeles took on the case because Johnson and Berg were asking for a cocredit with Green as writers of the film, which starred Richard Chamberlain as war hero Raoul Wallenberg and aired in early April. Green spent six days compiling script drafts and documents for the committee to peruse.

``I`m the world`s biggest pessimist,`` says Green, who also wrote NBC`s globally acclaimed ``Holocaust`` mini-series. ``But after I went over the script prior to the arbitration proceedings and saw how little Berg and Johnson had contributed, I said to my wife, `I`m going to win this.` ``

And he did. On Feb. 20, the Guild notified Paramount, producers of the mini-series, that ``the writing credits shall read as follows: `Teleplay by Gerald Green.` `` That seemed to be that until Johnson, interviewed recently in this column, declared, ``Dick and I rewrote the script from scratch. I hated the script Gerald Green wrote and didn`t want to do it.``

``Remember in `Virginia Woolf` how they played games like `Get the Guest?` `` Green says. ``This game is called `Remove the Writer.` Lamont Johnson is simply wrong--unequivocally and flatly wrong.``

From Hollywood, Johnson sounds as though he is sorry he made the remarks but does not recant them. ``We dramatized the scenes that Mr. Green had simply placed in the chronology of what was already the Wallenberg story,`` Johnson says. From Paramount, Berg insists that he and Johnson ``did a major rewrite of Gerald Green`s script.``

However, the Guild made a painstaking scene-by-scene comparison of the original Green script and the final version when it made its decision unanimously in Green`s favor, concurring with Green that Berg and Johnson had rewritten at most 30 percent, not enough to qualify for a credit. If Berg and Johnson felt they were wronged by the ruling, Green says, they had every right and opportunity to file for a review. But they did not. He thinks this proves they know they are wrong.

Berg says he decided that filing for a review of the ruling would be ``an exercise in futility.`` Johnson says, ``I was too busy to quarrel at that point.``

A former journalist whose eclectic career includes production stints on the NBC classic ``Wide Wide World`` and the network`s ``Today`` show, Green is perhaps best known for his novel ``The Last Angry Man,`` which became a television play and a film. He wrote both adaptations. The novel was based on the life of his father, a doctor in the slums of Brooklyn.

``And when things got so terrible for this man,`` Green says of his main character, ``he had a quote: `The bastards won`t let you alone.` It`s entered the language. A friend of mine who`s a writer in Hollywood said that`s the way it is out there. The bastards won`t let you alone. And I never really believed that . . . until this Lamont Johnson thing.``

On the positive side, Green concedes that some of Berg`s and Johnson`s changes were good ones. He says the film was beautifully directed by Johnson and credits Berg with selling NBC on the idea to make it. Johnson calls Green ``a thoroughly nice man, enormously talented.`` And Berg says, as perhaps only a Hollywood producer could after all this acrimonious fuss, ``I don`t want to derogate Gerald Green. He is a fine writer. In fact, I`m thinking about him for another project right now. . . .``